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Abstract: The study described the production of intonation pattern of the Non-English major student teachers
during their on-campus teaching. The qualitative research method was used to analyze the data and describe their
intonation patterns. The utterances were investigated in distinction between falling and rising intonation of whquestions and yes/no questions. In the conduct of analysis, an interview guide was used to gather data on the
language profile of the student teachers. Data confirm that the student teachers mother tongue (Filipino) was
commonly used in most of their verbal exchanges activities. It is worthy to note that the utterances of the student
teachers displayed evidence of intonation patterns variation on wh-questions and yes/no questions. The production
of intonation patterns of the student teachers was resulted from the common linguistic phenomenon in which they
tended to carry the intonation and pronunciation rules from their mother tongue (Filipino) into their English
spoken discourse.This qualitative research study implies that there is an interference of first language (Filipino) in
the production of the student teachers intonation patterns which describes the Philippine English intonation
pattern for wh- questions and yes/no questions. Forthcoming studies may obtain more valued insights by gathering
geographically varied samples that would include student teachers across disciplines.
Keywords: Intonation Patterns, Student Teachers, Philippine English.
1.
INTRODUCTION
Utterance in spoken discourse is a dynamic method of putting up meaning which entails more than just producing and
receiving of words but more of processing of information (Burns & Joyce, 1997). The form and meaning of utterance as a
process are dependent on the situation in which it happens, including the participants involvement and the motives for
speaking. It has its own skills and conventions different from written language (Cohen, 1996). It is habitually
spontaneous, open-ended, and progressive.
English, being the medium of instruction in education, requires all teachers across disciplines to possess the ability to use
the language effectively. However, the use of the English language varies significantly all over the world. It may be a
foreign language in some places, but a second language in other countries. These variations in the use of English language
demonstrate the linguistic identity of English speakers in those places (Abrar-ul-Hassan, 2010).
However, this importance of spoken discourse performance is not completely acknowledged in terms of production of
intonation patterns. For instance, Gussenhoven and Warner (2002) present a survey on spontaneous speech and they
ascertain that little focus is paid to intonational structure. Likewise, Levis (2005), argues that the decision to focus more
strongly on segmental features contrast the approach which tends to foreground the suprasegmental features such as
intonation pattern.
As regards performance, the researcher visited various resources and found out that many studies have been carried out on
spoken discourse. However, among a multitude of study area are of artificially created utterances, while a few have
looked at the natural setting of actual spoken discourse performance of non- native speakers of English exclusively for the
production of intonation pattern. In some of the foregoing studies on language system, Pennington and Ellis (2000) find
that even for Cantonese speakers with advanced competence in English find difficulty recognizing the use of intonation in
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2.
What is the production of intonation pattern of student teachers in terms of the following:
2.1
WH Questions
2.2
Yes/No Questions?
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2.
On Phonology: Intonation:
Phonology is a study of the sound systems of languages. It is distinguished from phonetics, which is the study of the
production, perception, and physical properties of speech sounds; phonology attempts to account for how they are
combined, organized, and convey meaning in particular languages. Only a fraction of the sounds humans can articulate is
found in any particular language. As compared to morphology, syntax and vocabulary, English accent (part of
phonology), according to Hudson (1996) is less liable to standardization. With this, the present study describes the spoken
discourse performance on phonology of the subjects through their production of intonation patterns.
It is believed that intonation is an inseparable component of spoken discourse. It is a non-grammatical and non-lexical
component of communication (Celik, 2001) and it refers to pitch variations in speech. Together with other nongrammatical and non-lexical components of communication, such as tempo, rhythm, loudness, and sound color. It belongs
to a distinct language system which is called the vocal code. The essentials of the vocal code very rarely occur
independently of the elements of the verbal code, called segments, and they almost always occur simultaneously with
them. Thus, units of the vocal code are called supra segmentals (Hlebec, 2004). Intonation is extremely significant supra
segmental element because a spoken discourse without it would sound monotonous. However, the present study is strictly
bounded only to identifying the intonation patterns of the student teachers utterances.
Discourse intonation views intonation as neither grammatical nor attitudinal. Brazil, Coulthard, and Johns (1980)
emphasises that the significance of intonation is related to the function of the utterance as an existentially appropriate
contribution to an interactive discourse. He further claimed that by making a choice in any of the intonation systems, a
speaker makes an assumption about what he takes, for present purposes, to be the state of understanding between him and
a hearer. Speakers thus make intonation choices according to their perception of the understandings they share with their
listeners: these understandings relate to their talk in a particular context. Although syntax and intonation do have a
relationship in purpose-driven talk (Brazil, 1985), they are regarded as being separate areas of choice. Thus discourse
intonation holds that there is no normal relationship between tone units and clauses.
Furthermore, Halliday (1970) states that any alteration in intonation pattern signifies changes in the semantics of the
ultimate message, including the speakers attitude and the structure of information as perceived by the listeners.
Hirst and DiCristo (1998) stress the account on the intonation pattern of a specific language is a particularly not easy
undertaking since it is one of the most language specific features of human language. Moreover, every language has
intonation that makes it universal. In their survey of intonation systems, in many languages (English, Spanish,
Romanian, Russian, Greek) the intonation of wh-questions is described as being more alike to that of statements
than that of yes-no questions. In French, unmarked wh-questions are produced with a falling final pitch like
statements but the regular rising pattern found in statements is usually replaced by the down stepping pattern
observed in yes/no questions. In Romanian and Greek, however, wh-questions are said to be more like forceful
declaratives and rising intonation is said to be uncommon.
Correspondingly, Rintell (1984) found that negative L1-L2 transfer was obvious among Chinese learners of English in the
production of phonology. Chinese speakers had particular difficulty in recognizing the English intonation pattern because
Chinese judged the English language according to their tone language of Chinese. Thus, this transfer of phonological
knowledge resulted in errors.
Grabe and Post (2002) on the other hand, examined the nuclear accents in yes/no questions in Dublin English and found
that a falling pattern was the most common.
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3.
METHODOLOGY
The present study used a qualitative method research design. It takes a descriptive approach that uses the video recorded
transcripts to describe the English intonation pattern of the student teachers during on-campus teaching. The student
teachers language profile was primarily established through their responses during the interview with the use of interview
guide adapted from (Pareja, 2003).
A total of 69 Industrial Education students were were selected based on their scores on a language proficiency test on
Transparent Language which was personally administered to them by the researcher. Those first three student teachers
who got the highest scores on proficiency result in every area of specialization were taken as subjects of the research
study. Hence, six student teachers were treated as participants. They were teaching freshmen and sophomore students in
Industrial Technology courses as part of their on-campus teaching. These participants were homogeneous and shared
common features such as age (young adults: between 19 and 21 years old), mother tongue (Filipino) and with no other
foreign language except English. All in all, there were five female student teachers and only one male student teacher
were employed as participants for the present research.
In the present research, the transcriptions were done by viewing and reviewing the video recorded classes of student
teachers during on-campus teaching. Transcriptions were completed verbatim. The video recorded data were then
transcribed manually and further validated by language experts. Thus, transcriptions were done by hand and eventually
used for analysis. Words from transcripts which were highly technical, as well as the unclear names uttered, were
consulted with the student teachers themselves for accuracy.
For this research, ethical considerations were closely observed hence, the identities of participants were kept confidential
through the use of codenames in the analysis and reporting of data.
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4.
This chapter presents, analyzes, and interprets the data gathered in the conduct of the study on the English intonation
pattern of student teachers. It answers the specific questions earlier raised in the research. The findings are given in two
sections: the language profile of the student teachers and their production of English intonation pattern.
Research Question No. 1. What is the language profile of the student teachers?
Table 1 illustrates the responses of the student teachers on the questions asked during the interview.
Table.1 Language Profile of Student Teachers
Items
Language first
learned to speak
Language most
frequently used
at home
Language best
understood in
listening
Language
spoke fluently
Language used
best in writing
Language best
understood
Language
usually used in
thinking
Language most
frequently used
in classes
Language most
frequently used
outside classes
Student
Teacher
Student
Teacher
Student
Teacher
Student
Teacher
Student
Teacher
Student
Teacher
A
Filipino
B
Filipino
C
Tagalog
D
Tagalog
E
Filipino
F
Filipino
Filipino
Filipino
Tagalog
Tagalog
Filipino
Filipino/
Bicol
Filipino
Filipino
Tagalog
Tagalog/
English
Filipino/
English
English
Filipino /
English
Filipino /
English
Filipino
Filipino
Tagalog
Tagalog
English
Tagalog
English
Filipino/
English
Filipino
English
Tagalog
Filipino
Filipino /
English
English
Tagalog
Tagalog/
English
Tagalog/
English
Filipino/
English
Filipino/
English
Filipino/
English
Filipino/
English
English
English
English
English
English
English
Filipino
Filipino
Tagalog
Filipino
Filipino
Filipino
English
Table 1 shows that Filipino language is the prevailing verbal communication medium among the participants.
Based on the data, all of the participants claimed that Filipino is the first language they learn to speak. Although Student
Teachers C and D asserted that they first learned the Tagalog language to also mean Filipino. These students believed that
Tagalog and Filipino are synonyms.
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Table 2 presents the utterances of Student Teacher A for wh- questions. It is very much noticeable that almost all the
utterances are rising intonations except in lines 93-94 Where are the capacitors, which follows falling intonation of the
General American Pattern. It is noteworthy that Student Teacher A was observed to produce rising intonation pattern for
wh- questions despite the fact that she displayed fluency in most of her utterances in lines 1-636. She even claimed during
the interview of her language profile that she speaks English fluently. It seems true that if a non-native speaker is almost
fluent in the English language, she often cannot appropriately use the intonation with any reasonable degree of
confidence, and this is the only way in which one can tell that she is not a native speaker of the said language.
Table.3 Student Teacher Bs Observed Intonation for Wh- Questions
In Table 3, the data show Student Teacher B demonstrated a rising intonation in nearly all of her wh- questions. Line 639,
Whos going to lead the prayer? and lines 981-982 Who can answer it on the board? follow the falling intonation
pattern. But unlike Student Teacher A, Student Teacher B exhibited hesitancy in the use of English language in most of
her utterances as further discussed in the error analysis of the present study.
In the utterances Whos going to lead the prayer? and Who can answer it on the board?, Student Teacher B ended
them with falling intonations, which is the usual ending intonation for wh question, based on the American English
intonation. The listener may infer that the speaker is not done speaking and will wait for more information if the said
pattern is not used.
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Conversely, Table 4 shows that Student Teacher C exhibited a mixed up of rising and falling intonation patterns in her
utterances. As observed, there are four utterances that are rising while the rest of the utterances follow the falling
intonation pattern for wh -questions.
For rising intonation, Student Teacher Cs utterance in lines 1128-1129 So, how about THE OTHERS? indicated she
wanted more similar answers from her students and wanted to know who would like to give another acceptable answer.
Similarly, Student Teacher C seemed to hold no assumption as to what her student really means when she asked in line
1280, What does IT MEAN? She ended it in rising intonation asking her students as who would like to explain the topic
she just introduced. Perhaps she wanted to check whether her students had background knowledge on the new topic. In
line 1393 however, Student Teacher C appeared to be a little irritated on her students laughing on something that led her
utterances to rising intonation, Why are you laughing? These observed utterances of Student Teacher C displayed
deviations on the intonation patterns of most English language users who follow the acceptable intonation pattern for
asking wh- questions.
Table.5 Student Teacher Ds Observed Intonation for Wh- Questions
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Table 6 shows the utterances of Student Teacher E for wh - questions. Data demonstrate indistinguishable intonation
pattern as compared to the utterances of Student Teacher C. They both exhibited inconsistency in the production of
intonation pattern for wh -questions. However, Student Teacher E produced an up- rise intonation pattern in line 1993,
WHAT PLATE? Here, she sounded as if she was suddenly reminded of asking this question that made her a little
animated. Most of the utterances were rising and the remainder followed the falling intonations. The wh -questions ended
with a rising or falling pitch boundary, depending on whether Student Teacher was asking a question, or was making a
suggestion as a question or was confident about parts of her utterance that led her to use the falling intonation.
Table.7 Student Teacher Fs Observed Intonation for Wh- Questions
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As seen in Table 8, Student Teacher A produced rising intonation pattern in all of her utterances. It appears that she could
manage to produce the General American intonation pattern for utterances as a word or complete sentence of yes/ no
question. Her utterance, though there was neither subject nor subject verb inversion as in the usual yes/ no questions,
showed that she could handle the intonation of rising well enough. The intonation within a word changes its meaning
quite a bit as in line 228, NoBODY? The intonation production of Student Teacher A shows a combination of a question
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As shown in Table 9, some of the utterances of Student Teacher B that displayed the yes/no question seem to follow the
typical rising intonation pattern, although there were some that sounded differently and which led to falling intonation.
These yes/no questions of Student Teacher B sounded that she was more polite with her students when she asked if they
could proceed to the examples as expressed in line 637, Can we PROCEED to the EXAMPLES I HAVE PREpared?
Similarly, in lines 694-695, So, do you understand now? and in line 825 "Do you UNDERSTAND the TRANSformer
now?", in which she expected a yes answer from her students. Instead of the typical rising intonation for yes/no question,
falling intonations were observed in her utterances.
These irregularities in the production of intonation for yes/no questions may have something to do with Cauldwell and
Hewings findings (1996). According to them, the rules of intonation given in ELT books are inadequate descriptions of
what occur in naturally-occurring speech such as the classroom spoken discourse. They claimed that studies of yes/no
questions in authentic speech support the view that the relationship between intonation and question form is more
complex than that suggested in textbook rules (Cauldwell & Hewings, 1996). Perhaps, this is one of the reasons why
erratic intonations occurred in the utterances of student teachers.
Table 10 presents the utterances of Student Teacher C displaying the intonation pattern for yes/no questions.
Table.10 Student Teacher Cs Observed Intonation for Yes/No Questions
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As shown in Table 11, there are only two utterances of yes/ no question that are identified as falling intonation. The lines
1478-1479, Are YOU FAMILIAR with this kind of circuit? and line 1562, Is THIS clear?, are the utterances of
Student Teacher D in which she produced falling intonation. The other eight utterances however, followed the rising
intonation pattern.
This production of intonation for yes/no questions of Student Teacher D is a bit similar to the manner of production of
Student Teacher B. Both of them almost demonstrated the General American Pattern for yes/no questions except for few
utterances that are falling. It can be recalled that the observed intonation for the wh- questions of Student Teacher D was
as well rising for the entire utterances who commonly associated questions with rising intonations.
Table.12 Student Teacher Es Observed Intonation for Yes/No Questions
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Student Teacher F however, displayed a mixed up of intonation patterns in Table 13. Out of five utterances with yes/no
questions, two of them are falling and the other three utterances follow the rising intonation. The performance of Student
Teacher F appears to be comparable with Student Teacher C. They both exhibited apparent irregularities in their
production of yes/no questions. This result is similar to that of Grabe and Post (2002), who found that the falling
intonation was common in Dublin English in yes/no question utterances.
The results of the study showed contrary to what Crystal (1975) reported that almost majority of tones will be falls
almost in any type of discourse in spoken English and to what Celik (2011) stressed that a falling tone is by far the most
common used tone of all. The present study however, shows that majority of the utterances of student teachers used rising
intonation (both for wh-questions and yes/no questions). This is possibly because the participants tended to ask questions
during class discussions, thus, the use of the rising intonation pattern. As Brazil, Coulthard, and Johns (1980) point out,
the rising intonation is frequently used by a speaker who has a more dominant role in a conversation, which is true among
student teachers for they nearly dominated the class discussion.
Intonation has been described by Grabe (2004) as the most difficult aspect of a foreign language to acquire and is held
responsible for numerous instances of miscommunication between native and non-native speakers. Although the claim is
in the global context, it is still an issue whether Philippine English should be mindful of the General American Pattern, the
fact that Filipinos, most of the time, understand what their fellow Filipinos mean despite of the intonation variations when
using the English language. This observation is at variance to what Al-Sibai, (2009) stressed that the hearers pay attention
to intonation when they are trying to understand an utterance. As what Halliday (1970) states, intonation is not only a
matter of making oneself understood or having a good pronunciation, but is a way of expressing various meanings. He
further claims that there are at all times a variety of possible intonation patterns for utterances, and they will all bring
different meanings
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5.
Summary:
The study is a qualitative research in which it aimed to describe the English intonation pattern of the student teachers in
on-campus teaching. Specifically, it aimed to describe the language profile of the student teachers and the performance of
student teachers in terms of phonology.
Data from student teachers language profile substantiate that their mother tongue (Filipino) appears to play a role in their
spoken discourse performance. Filipino is the prevailing verbal communication medium among the student teachers
under study. The data further show that the utterances of student teachers were accompanied by a range of intonation
patterns. There was repeated use of mixture of intonations in asking wh-questions and yes/no questions. In particular, the
student teachers had their ways of producing intonation in asking questions depending on what they wanted to get across.
Notably, however, most of these questions were produced with rising intonation. In fact, they had the tendency to assign
prominence to non-selective words. The discourse function of this intonation realization was to accentuate key ideas
Brazil (1995).
Conclusions:
The student teachers intonation patterns account for their spoken discourse performance. The student teachers
demonstrated variations of intonation patterns in asking wh-questions and yes/no questions during their on-campus
teaching. Their intonation patterns did not conform to the General American Pattern. Intonation patterns of student
teachers for wh- and yes/no questions had rising tones. The analysis shows that the participants assigned prominence
to words to highlight new information in order to expand students shared understanding.
Thus, data of the present study reveal that there was an interference of Filipino language (L1) in the production of
intonation patterns, of the utterance of English language (L2). Data further present a variety of Philippine English based
on the utterances of student teachers which are patterned on the Philippine language structures.
Recommendations:
The study puts forward the following recommendations as a result of the conclusions:
There is an evidence of a need to generalize the results to other populations, it is necessary to have geographically diverse
samples that would include student teachers across disciplines from different colleges and universities.
In addition, it is deemed necessary that the findings of the present research should be explored further. In particular, it
would be interesting to more directly investigate production of English intonation pattern through a descriptivequantitative longitudinal research which warrants both descriptive and inferential statistics.
Thus, it is hoped that the study of production of intonation pattern among non - English major student teachers presented
here will serve as a stimulus for further research in this area.
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